


Friends Don't Stand By.

by theatergirl06



Category: Six - Marlow/Moss
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-05-06
Updated: 2020-05-06
Packaged: 2021-03-02 22:33:47
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,877
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24034354
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/theatergirl06/pseuds/theatergirl06
Summary: This one is a bit odd. A sort of oneshot alternate timeline, I guess is the best word for it.
Relationships: Henry VIII of England/Jane Seymour
Comments: 3
Kudos: 55





	Friends Don't Stand By.

**Author's Note:**

> TW: Brief mention of throwing heavy objects, deep depression.  
> My first time writing with the kids! Enjoy!

Jane Seymour sighed as she stared down into her son’s clear blue eyes. She wished they were the same shade as hers, but they were darker. Eerily like his father.

She loved Edward so much. She’d loved him since before he was born. She’d carried him, talked to him, picked out toy after toy for him. She’d spent the last two and a half years of her life being with him, caring for him, loving him. He was closer to her heart than anyone else in the world. He was everything to her. Absolutely everything.

She laughed as she dangled his little grey teddy bear above his head and he grabbed for it, his tiny hands squeezing her own as he did. At the same time, she felt tears pricking at the corner of her eyes.

Her  _ son,  _ her only child, was being taken away from her in just an hour.

And there was absolutely nothing she could do about it. 

She never should have trusted Henry. They’d only dated for a year or so before they’d gotten married, and there had been signs of how toxic their relationship was from the beginning. The way Henry would ignore her if she disagreed with him. The way he would always talk about how she’d “better not do this” or “regret it if she did that.” The way, before Edward was born, he’d hovered over her shoulder all the time, as though by being there he would ensure that nothing would go wrong. It hadn’t been the sweet, romantic kind of hovering. It had been the kind that only made her wish he would go away.

Her friends had tried to tell her to get out, that this was dangerous, that it wasn’t good for her. But there had been so much love there, too, that she’d refused to believe it. She’d sworn they were lying to her, but in reality, she had only been lying to herself. And now she was paying for it in the worst way possible.

She had tried, she really had. A year after Edward had been born, Henry had come home and thrown a vase against the wall. It had missed Edward’s head by half an inch.    
That had been the wake-up call Jane needed. She still remembered every detail of that night. She remembered shrieking at Henry about being a bad father, pouring out every ounce of pent-up anger and fear she’d kept hidden since she’d started dating Henry, three whole years ago by that point.

She’d gone to the courthouse the next morning and filed for a divorce. She hadn’t slept all night, and must have looked absolutely terrifying, because they accepted her request right away. 

She’d gotten her divorce. She’d gotten full custody of Edward. And for another year or so, everything had been perfect. She’d taken care of her son. She’d loved every second of it, even not getting sleep, even the days when Edward yelled until she thought her eardrums would burst. Being a mother suited her. It felt comfortable to her. It came naturally.

But Henry had had his eyes on her from the beginning, and he wanted his son. He didn’t love him the way Jane did, but he had a hunger for him that had always terrified her. She knew he would never make Edward feel alone, but he would never make him feel safe either.

So of course she’d filed for full custody when they’d divorced.

But Henry had never stopped wanting his son. He’d just been playing the long game. 

It had been an entire year since the divorce when Jane had gone to a bar with her two best friends. She hadn’t even been very drunk, just a little tipsy. Tipsy enough to make her emotions stronger than usual, especially if there was some sort of trigger.

And there most certainly had been. 

She’d been crazy to expect that she wouldn’t see Henry at all after they divorced. They still lived in the same neighborhood, hung out in all the same places. It had honestly been a miracle that they hadn’t seen each other already.

She’d tried not to talk to him, to stay completely focused on her friends, but Henry was clever and conniving, like a snake. He knew when to attack.

He’d come over just as she was at her peak point of tipsiness. Her two friends had gone to the bathroom to freshen up their makeup. One of them was single and the other had a girlfriend, so she’d been trying to help her flirt with some guys. Jane had been looking forward to watching their antics.

But Henry, of course, had  _ seen _ her alone and at her peak point of tipsiness. 

The rest of the night was a complete and utter blur. But she knew she’d yelled at him and cried. She’d looked absolutely insane.

Ordinarily, one drunk evening may not be enough for a lawyer to legally transfer a child from one parent to another, but Henry had friends in high places, and that had been the straw that broke the camel’s back.

Now, in an hour...make that half an hour, her son was going to be taken away from her forever. She’d never see him again.

Jane looked down at Edward...her baby...once again. He was absolutely adorable. Round face, blonde hair just like Jane’s, rosy cheeks, deep blue eyes, the best laugh, the kind that sounded like tinkling little bells and frogs croaking all at once.

She grinned at him and his little teddy bear as tears splashed down the sides of her face, falling thicker and faster every second. 

She wasn’t sure how long she sat and squeezed her son and cried, but it must have been half an hour, because soon there was banging on her door. 

She didn’t even think, she just sprinted for the back. Edward was her son. Henry was a dangerous man. This was the only place he’d be safe. She couldn’t let that safety get taken away from him. She just couldn’t. It was her job as his mother.

But she was stopped by a Social Security officer right as she reached the back door. She spun, trying to get Edward away from them, but they were on the other side of her, too. She shrank up against the wall, clutching him as closely to her chest as she could.

And behind the wall of tall, imposing Social Security employees stood the most imposing one of all.

Henry. 

How desperately she didn’t want him to take her son. He may technically belong to them both, but he was and had always been hers, through and through.

She’d expected a fallout from their divorce, with a man as aggressive as Henry it was inevitable, but she’d never expected one quite like this. 

Now, Henry was staring her directly in the eyes, the grin on his face more vicious than she’d ever seen before in her life. It was so terrifying that she had to close her eyes because she couldn’t look at him anymore. She couldn’t bear to think of her one and only child going to live with the man who had that vicious grin.

So she did her best, even surrounded by Social Security workers, to not think about it. She’d break completely if she did.

So she tried not to think about it as the men wrenched Edward from her arms. She tried not to think about it as they left, leaving her all alone in a house that suddenly seemed a million times too big. 

But she’d tried to think about it when she kissed Edward on the head and said goodbye.

She wanted to remember every single moment with him.

But those moments were all that played in her head after he was gone. She wasn’t sure how much she cried, but the tears didn’t seem to stop. They just kept coming and coming. 

How could she have been such an awful mother as to let him be taken like this?

Was there anything worse for him that she could have done?

He was really, really gone.

She was never going to see him again.

Not ever.   
So she covered her eyes. She wrapped her arms around herself and pretended he was there, filling that empty space in her heart.

And she cried. She cried until her eyes felt like they couldn’t cry any longer, and then she cried some more.

She stayed that way for days. It wasn’t healthy, she knew, but she couldn’t bring herself to move, to go on with life. How could life go on when there was a great black void inside of her where her son should be? A void that Henry had created. 

She didn’t eat or sleep or drink. She just sat on the floor in a haze and she cried.

Was she dying? How long had this been going on? She could feel everything completely slipping away. 

Death seemed like a pretty good option right now. She wanted a way out of this empty, soulless life without the only thing that brought her happiness.

So she let her life slip away. 

Until one day when she felt something soft and familiar fall into her arms.    
She recognized it instantly.    
She glanced up through blurry vision, and saw her two best friends standing above her, each with their own child in their arms. Jane adored Mary and Elizabeth, and seeing their faces made her crack a smile.

But what really made her smile was the fact that, somehow, her son was safe in her arms again, brought home by her best friends in the whole entire world.

Slowly, she got to her feet, and turned to stare Catherine and Anne right in the eye.

“How...how did you do this?”

Catherine smiled at her. “We went around town. We collected evidence. We talked to people.”   
Anne grinned. “We stayed up all night…”

“We put a case together…”

“And we sued him. To give custody back to you.”

Jane could feel the happiness welling up inside of her, like the heat of the sun had made its way into her heart. “And you won.”

Catherine smiled and squeezed her daughter tightly, just as Anne squeezed her daughter, and Jane, for the first time in weeks, squeezed her son.   
“We won.”

Jane felt tears welling up in her eyes again, but this time, they were from joy. “You did this all for me?”

Anne wrapped her fingers around hers. “Jane, you’re our best friend. That baby is basically our child. We weren’t going to let him live in danger like that, and we weren’t going to let you live without him.”

Jane struggled to get words out of her mouth. “I just...I...thank you.”

Catherine smiled and put one arm around Jane and the other around Mary. “It’s what best friends do.”

Anne did the same with her own daughter. “It’s what the mum club does.”

“We are not the mum club.”

“You get the point.”

For the first time in weeks, Jane laughed. She smiled. She was  _ happy.  _

She had her best friends. She had her son.

She’d gotten her family back after all.


End file.
